Thursday, March 19, 2009

Safina faltered before the poisoned chalice of number one ranked player and Serena will retain. At least she’s deserving. Azarenka continues her charge towards the top ten, Wozniacki showed why she’s not getting there for a while yet and Radwanska isn’t leaving yet. Fed looked good when he wasn’t getting passed by Gonzo, Robredo pulled, the Djoker managed to win two tiebreaks and Roddick beat Ferrer.

So Victoria Azarenka saves the WTA by stopping the Major-less Safina’s chances of ascending to the top spot. Otherwise we go back to the nonsense when Jankovic was the Major-less top ranker and spends half her time trying to defend the indefensible. “Yep, I believe I really am the best player in the game – the fact that I can’t win any of the top tournaments and I’m only top cause I play more weeks than the others is not important.” Guess we do this all again next week in Miami...

7 comments:

I actually really warming to Victoria. She has sort of become my replacement Maria. I love her fight and fiesty/bitchy on court personality. Im so glad Safina is not becoming number 1 we dont need another reason for womens tennis to come any anymore scrutiny.

Ahh, but why do you like Maria? For her fighting qualities? Fashion sense? Ice-queen demeanour? Professionalism? Baseline-bashing game? Deafening shrieking? All of the above? I’m not sure Victoria can compete in all those categories. I mean she has the shriek and a bit of fight and a raw one-dimensional game but she’s no diva (yet).

How can you say she got to number 1 by overplaying if she was that consistent and finished the season with a winning record against the top 10 players(13-12). I noticed your blog about how she should be ranked 7th because of her career head to head records against the current top 10 - well in how many of those matches was JJ ranked top 10? and in case you didn't know the ranking system is based on how you perform over a single season so it rewards form and consistency - not how good you have been over the last 10 or however many years of your career otherwise it wouldn't accurately reflect how you're currently playing going into tournaments and organising draws/seedings the fairest way.

(continued from my last post) Jankovic got to the top by being consistent over a whole season not just over a 2 week GS. She got to at least the semis of all tier 1 tournaments and at least the semi's in 3 of the 4 slams and finished the season with 4 titles in the process which nobody else on the tour bettered.

If Serena and co. don't like it maybe they should create a breakaway tour for part time players.

Absolutely Barry, the rankings are based on archievement over a rolling 12 month period. But it hurts the WTA to have a number one player who can't win any of the top tournaments or have a winning record against the other top players. And as you say Serena etc don't help the situation by being mostly part-time. Whether the much-vaunted roadmap changes things we'll have to see. Thanks for your comment.